After serving as a principle songwriter for sophomoric New York garage rock band
the Beets,
Juan Wauters embarked on a solo career that explored far more stripped-down moods. Recording minimal songs often centered on just his voice and acoustic guitar,
Wauters sang his light and child-like songs in both Spanish and English on albums like 2014's
NAP: North American Poetry and 2019's highly collaborative travelogue La Onda de Juan Pablo. 2021's eclectic
Real Life Situations saw him teaming up with
Mac DeMarco, among others, on an album that celebrated community even as he was working solo.
Juan Wauters was born in Uruguay and left in 2002 to join his father, who had migrated to New York for work a few years prior. While working in a factory,
Wauters turned to music and socializing to alleviate the boredom and loneliness he was feeling in his otherwise drab working life. He met José Garcia in 2004 when they were both enrolled in a community college art class, and the two formed the sophomoric garage act
the Beets, who would go on to release several albums on Brooklyn indie label Captured Tracks beginning in 2009.
In 2014,
Wauters stepped out on his own with his first solo album,
NAP: North American Poetry, a much gentler approach to skewed folk than the often-demented Luddite garage rock of
the Beets. The next year, he collaborated with like-minded artist and tourmate Carmelle Safdie on a short EP, Wearing Leather, Wearing Fur. The brief collection of songs featured lead appearances from both songwriters and was issued by Captured Tracks under the moniker
Juan Wauters & Carmelle.
Wauters' second solo full-length,
Who Me?, was recorded toward the end of 2014 and released by Captured Tracks in May 2015.
Over the course of the next several years,
Wauters was involved in an independent film being shot in Argentina and spent some time traveling around Latin America. During his travels he would find collaborators in each city and record songs with his new friends, resulting in the album La Onda de Juan Pablo, which was released in January 2019 on Captured Tracks. He followed it in May with
Introducing Juan Pablo, a collection of songs recorded between 2015 and 2016, intended as a prequel to the travelogue of La Onda de Juan Pablo. Prior to the 2020 pandemic and ensuing quarantine,
Wauters had begun traveling the U.S., applying a similar collaborative approach with artists ranging from
Mac DeMarco to
Cola Boyy and
Nick Hakim. The resulting 2021 album,
Real Life Situations, combined these travel sessions with field recordings and intimate solo tracks from his New York home. ~ Fred Thomas